We looked at each other and nodded enthusiastically.She produced a much bigger bottle and carefully brushed off the dust. She then leaned towards us and whispered that if we didn’t mind having a bottle without the label she could sell us a litre of the armagnac for the same price as a smaller bottle An extra 25 per cent for free. She spoke without a local accent and was highly articulate.We tasted each year and chose the 1965; an armagnac that was as smooth as young flesh, but as warming as a mature love, and so fiery that it gave a new meaning to consummation. After the yelping had died away, she lined up three egg-cup sized glasses before three bottles labelled 1995, 1985 and 1965. We sat down and I trod on another sleeping dog beneath the table. The dark parlour contained a mausoleum of a wardrobe, a sideboard the size of a small car, four sleeping dogs, three sleeping cats, and several dozen bottles of armagnac. Dressed in black, with steel-rimmed spectacles, a shawl, large boots and a charming smile, she looked at our GB plate, smiled again and led us in to safety.Armagnac? Of course! With an elegant twirl of her hips she turned and guided us through a kitchen squalid enough to trigger a heart attack in a health-and-safety official.

The arrival of our Volvo estate prompted a chorus of frenzied barking, snarling, howling, fluttering, grunting, slavering, quacking, hissing and general farmyard noises.While we were musing on the contrast between the Buzet co-operative and the farmyard, wondering how we were going to be able to leave the car without being bitten, savaged, nipped by hostile beaks, or at least gored by several dozen cockerels, a door opened behind us and out came the farmer’s wife. And starving cats, chicken, geese, ducks, a cockerel on a dung heap, and several fierce and hungry dogs. Surrounding it were dozens of huge barrels, dilapidated carts, a tangled pile of firewood, toppling sheds, and an old Citro?buried beneath a pyramid of maize husks. Afterwards, we headed south, a little more slowly now, to buy some armagnac.We eventually discovered the place, a half-timbered, shuttered and ivy-smothered ancient farmhouse slowly sinking into the ground. My mouth had been watering ever since.We had lunch in Buzet – a snack of foie gras, salade aux g?ers avec walnuts, souffl?aison, magret de goose, and a choice of about 10 sorbets, not to mention a bottle or two of delicious Buzet red – in the local restaurant, also patronised by a road-mending gang who arrived covered in white dust and spent 15 minutes choosing their wine. It was all gold; and inside a shield framed by heraldic figures were printed phrases in red and black Gothic type saying, “Eau de vie de Prune d’Ente”, “Pruneaux ?’Armagnac”, and “Vieille Armagnac” All matured in oak and sold at the farm.

In the local market that week, I’d seen the most alluring business card. So we went and there was and you could, so we did – about 90 litres of it, in three big plastic bags, each with a tap.But besides quantity, we were also on the hunt for quality – some special armagnac. And there was a modern co-operative, too, they said, full of computers and marble floors and elegant girls in short skirts, where you could even buy the stuff in bulk. You could get good wine there, they said; cheaper than Bordeaux – and better. The next day, we were going home and we wanted some wine to take back – not too expensive but worth drinking We’d been told about Buzet, between Cahors and Bordeaux. It’s the edition for Gascony, in south-west France, the home of armagnac, where we had been renting a farmhouse that summer.I had bought the bottle on the Friday after that issue of La D?che. It held something quite different.And anyway, right now I can’t even see the bottle, let alone the stars on its neck, because wrapped all round it and tightly bound with tape is a copy of the French newspaper, La D?che, dated 2 September 2000.